Sudbourne / Sadburn / Sudburna / Sudburne / Sudborne / Sutburna

There are four entries for Sudbourne [variant spellings] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/TM4153/sudbourne/] [accessed 22 June 2025]; one of them, in the land of Robert Malet, reporta "1 church. 0.13 church lands"; another entry, in the land of Ely, reports "1 church. 0.06 church lands" in it. Gough (1792) lists an early baptismal font, square and mounted on four supports, in "Sadburn, Suffolk" [NB: the placename is usually spelled "Sudbourne"]. Parker (1855) reports a Norman font "with a square bowl on legs" in this church. The 9 July 1872 Oxford Meeting of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology reports on a visit to Sudbourne All Saints': "The font is Norman, the bowl supported by four shafts, two of which are modern; the whole has been recut." The Antiquary (July 27, 1872. p. 179) mentions "the curious, plain, and massive Norman font, the bowl carried upon four round shafts […] The Norman font has been rather chiselled about since he [Mr. Phipson] saw it twenty years ago" [NB: Mr. Phipson was the leader of the group from the Suffolk Institute of Archaelogy visiting the church; the re-tooling or re-cutting of the font must have therefore taken place in the 1850s]. Described and illustrated in Knott (2008): "The font is like a ripe cheese - the base is clearly modern, and Mortlock says that the shafts are, too." The Sudbourne Parish Council page [http://www.onesuffolk.co.uk/SudbournePC/Church/] [accessed 17 March 2009] reports a Norman font in the west end of the nave. The basin is actually tub-shaped, rounded at the top and sides, but has a square frame at the angles and bottom, a shape that appears on some fonts of the period and that looks like an added frame on the rounded basin.